Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, the Muslim cleric who wants to build a $100 million mosque and community center near Ground Zero in New York City, has received a lot of attention relating to his religious beliefs, but there is another aspect of his life that is worth noting: as a longtime landlord, he has a history of operating poorly maintained housing complexes in New Jersey.

The economy has produced yet another black milestone for unemployment. As of January 2010, 49% of the 6.9 million Americans who lost jobs they had held for at least three years had found new jobs—the lowest reemployment rate on record, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. This statistic deals with what are known as “displaced” workers—those who lost their jobs because “their plant or company closed or moved, there was insufficient work for them to do, or their position or shift was abolished.” Records on reemployment of displaced workers have been kept since 1948. Of those who did find work similar to the job they lost, 55% took a cut in pay.

Banks can no longer gamble with their own money in the stock market as a result of new rules imposed by Congress. But there’s nothing that says financial institutions can’t take the same risks with other peoples’ money.

Homelessness has nearly doubled in New Orleans since Hurricane Katrina, even though only 80% of the city’s population has returned since the 2005 disaster. An investigation by the non-profit Unity of Greater New Orleans organization also discovered thousands of individuals living in abandoned homes and commercial buildings—which total 55,000 to date, making New Orleans “the most blighted city in America.”

Law enforcement can enter the driveways of people suspected of criminal behavior and attach tracking devices to their cars, all without a warrant, says a panel of judges on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. The decision runs contrary to other legal opinions that have held the driveways and surrounding areas outside a home as private property and protected under the Fourth Amendment. But the legal rationale employed by the judges indicate that their decision applies only to driveways that are easily accessible—in other words, not to those blocked by a gate or fence, such as those commonly found outside the homes of people who are wealthy.

With so many Americans struggling to get by, the United States has experienced a drop in births for the second year in a row, to the lowest level in the nation’s history. The U.S. birth rate fell in 2009 to 13.5 per 1,000 population—a marked decline from 2007 when the rate was 14.3 and more babies were born in the U.S. than any other year in its history. In 1820, the earliest year for which full statistics are available, the birth rate was 55.2 per 1,000 population.

While the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency considers whether to impose new federal regulations on coal ash, a new report shows the waste is a bigger problem than previously reported.

Too much of the U.S. government has established a bad habit of doing business again and again with the same contractors, resulting in inefficiencies and lost opportunities to save money. The Government Accountability Office came to this conclusion after reviewing certain trends in noncompetitive contracts that evolved over several years and discovering poor decisions and business practices by federal workers.

If you thought the use of full-body scanners at airports was a violation of personal privacy, just wait. The same technology is now rolling down the streets of American cities in unmarked vans.